Chega de Saudade

Okay, now that we know what saudade means, we move to the next step: Having had enough of it. Enough saudade already. Let's get our feet wet in this great mess of a next depression new world, even it's the old world, I mean the new world but the one I came from, the old one for me. But let me try to explain better what we're trying to do with this blog, and at the same time maybe clarify it for ourselves. When I first left Brazil, I thought I'd write a blog called homecoming, or reentry or some such where I would talk about the New York, that I'd left and how it was different upon return nearly 15 years later. The problem was I had too much to do, finding a place to live, not finding a place to live, getting thrown out of my dad's house and then finally really finding a place to live. Registering the kids for school, not once but twice. Minding the missus etc. etc. Plus the new job, a side trip to Washington, where I saw Jack Chang, for the first time out of Brazil and so on. So that's one of the things I want to revisit the changes in neighborhoods, cultural climate etc. etc. I left New York just as Rudolph Giulani was taking over and pre-9/11 so I wanted to talk about that stuff. But I also want to use this blog to rehash some of the stuff I went through in Brazil, that I haven't had a chance to process yet. I also thought, I'd throw up some of my old stories with added background information. You know, like those DVDs with extra scenes. One of the things I always felt working for the Associated Press was that the final article was too short, told too little about the entire experience. A friend of mine thought I should just do a book with all the added back story. I don't know. Anyway, I was supposed to file this last night but I felt like I was coming down with a cold. I'll add more stuff later. Got to get to work!!!!

Happy March 9!

By the way, today's a special day in the Jack universe. Since 1996, I've asked friends, family, acquaintances and total strangers to send me little writings, drawings, photos, etc. about what they did on March 9. It's pretty much a random date, but through this project, people have followed the lives of the March 9 family for more than a decade now. I used to compile everything in book form and hand them out months later. Now, I put it all online at www.march-9.com. I've been lagging and haven't yet put last year's online. I'll do that this week. But if you have something to contribute, please do so and send it to me at jtchang23@gmail.com or to my home address: 317 Hanover Ave. #305 Oakland, CA 94606. Viva March 9!

Communications Breakdown

I remember years back when I was generally drawing a blank, I tried to write a song called, "What I Want to Say." Don't try this at home, now, folks. It went something like this: "What I want to say, what I want to say, what I want to say to you. What I want to say in my special way. What I want to say is true." There was another part: "You bend, me you break me, you love me or you hate me ..." and that's about as far as it went. All this is a rather elaborate way to say I've been having computer problems all day and am not very much in the mood to blog. Still, during these hardscrabble times, I believe very much in persistence, in the simple nobility of jotting something down and getting something out. Jack was talking about how both of our first posts seemed very melancholy. Of course! The party's over. How could you not be melancholy? But I also get his point: We have to get past the melancholy if anyone's ever going to read this blog. Rather than melancholy, I'd like to revisit that classic, supposedly untranslateable Portuguese word, "saudade." Which roughly translates as nostalgia, but there's more. I always explain it thus: Its the feeling you get after you've visited Brazil for the first time and you've left a girl behind, you may not love her or anything, but she's back there and you're here _ and usually _ because you went for Carnaval (why else?) _ it's cold in North America and you've got saudade. I guess in that way it's also kind of like the blues. On the positive tip, it was a really nice day out today and I met a guy from work who lives nearby who said he bikes in every day and does it in about half an hour. So maybe I'll be getting back in shape and saving some subway fare.

Circle in a Square

I now live near Bartel Pritchard square, which is really a circle. It's a rather large traffic circle on the south western corner of Prospect Park, steps away from the F train. It's quite a change from where I used to live in a small gated Vila in Rio de Janeiro. I haven't bothered to find out who Bartel Pritchard was but in 00's it's only a Google away. I prefer to live with the mystery, at least, for a little longer. My friend Gilberto Silvany _ the man in many ways responsible for my interest in Brazil and my eventual move there _ came to visit me there once and, as a pick-up line, used to ask women at stop lights if they knew who the people were that the streets were named for: the Barao de Torre, Visconde de Piraja and so on. A year or so before I left, the streets signs started appearing with subtitles explaining just that _ apparently to stop desparate men from using street names to hit on young women. Anyway, many things are different now. We used to have a three story house a few blocks away from Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, it used to be sunny almost all the time and I never really needed a coat. Now we live in three bedroom apartment (which costs about twice as much as the house did) it's been a very cold winter _ until today _ and I really need a coat, as do my wife and two young children. So why did I do it? Leave Rio? Well, there was the tanking dollar and the rising Real that made it very expensive to live. There was the job which I felt I'd stayed in too long, and I thought it would be good for my kids to know their American side and for my wife to firm up her English. I am now actively reconsidering all those things. I was happy to be here for Obama's election and to see him take office. I couldn't convince AP to send me down to Washington for the inauguration, though. It looked very cold out there that day. My job as an editor on AP's international desk somehow morphed into a much less challenging job on their North American desk, where we basically take copy and rewrite it for foreign readers: Change Ill. to Illinois, convert meters to feet and change Taser to "stun gun" just in case Taser doesn't have international brand recognition. I remember once covering and arms fair in Rio and seeing a huge crowd of people lining up to see what it was like getting Tazed. We must keep in mind human beings are strange creatures. Ate mais.

Even Better Than the Real Thing

After nearly five months away, Brazil finally appeared in my dreams on Tuesday. Except it looked like a Miami theme park of Rio de Janeiro. Or maybe a theme park in Dubai. Fernando my usual taxi driver in Rio was driving me around the city, except that he was a Dubai theme park version of Fernando. Slicker, less scrawny, and his car was newer, larger. We stopped at several rodas de samba where I chatted with the musicians in Portuguese. This part of the dream was pretty authentic. They were playing in concrete-walled bars with a few plastic tables and chairs scattered around, just like the real things.

I've been back in the United States about five months now, and I'm more confused by life than ever.

In my dream, however, life was simple. I understood how the musicians operated, even how the Dubai theme park version of Fernando worked. I woke up from the dream feeling intense sorrow, about what I'd given up, haunted by memories. But then I lay in bed for a few more minutes thinking about the actual street in Rio I lived on, about the foreignness I felt about the place then even after three years living there, and realized, "That was just a dream. Rio in real life wasn't really that simple."

But I still carry that dream around with me. As I painfully launch a new life here in my supposedly native country, Brazil is still the simpler time I'll always long for. Even if it actually wasn't.